Apple’s Boot Camp supports only Windows 8.1 on Mac Pro

“Even though Windows 8.1 is not Microsoft’s most-popular PC operating system at this point — Windows 7 takes that title — Apple has decided it should be the only choice users of the new Mac Pro can have in Boot Camp,” Mihaita Bamburic reports for BetaNews.

“This may come as a surprise, considering Windows 8.1’s low adoption among PC users, but the company’s decision is to be expected,” Bamburic reports. “Boot Camp gradually drops support for older versions of Windows in newer Macs, as shown by the software’s support page.”

Bamburic reports, “As a result, the Boot Camp support page lists the 64-bit Windows 8.1 as the sole Microsoft-branded OS it supports, for the late-2013 Mac Pro.”

After updating a friend’s HP’s laptop to Windows 8.1, I had to downgrade it back to 8.0 an month or two later because it started running like crap in 8.1. Her laptop runs much faster in Windows 8. I also installed Classic Shell, which actually fixed the most egregious usability problems in 8.0 much better than 8.1 does.

As far as I can tell, Windows 8 and 8.1 are just a Windows 7 with a shell. I seriously see no reason why it would not work with Windows 7. Windows 7 also supports EFI and the drivers are likely the same. (x64) In Windows the drivers are 32/64 dependent. If you send me one I will install it for you 🙂

Apple doesn’t always make the right decisions…
Luckily you don’t have to use bootcamp, one can partition their hard drives themselves via Disk Utility and install what ever they want. As well, one can run another OS virtually via. Parallels, VirtualBox, etc… which is what I prefer todo.

A lot of kerfluffle about this, but really, not supporting WIN7 in bootcamp on new computers most likely comes down to USB3 support, or lack of it in WIN7, (without a special Intel driver package), and the fact that the new Mac Pro as well as the new Retina Macbook Pros are USB3 hardware. As I have both, and run WIN7 Pro in Parallels quite nicely, I don’t see it as a big loss, though previously I have been a bootcamp fan.

With the state of development of Parallels, I think it’s a better way to go these days.

Um, my PC which I built last year with Win 7 has USB3 and it worked by installing Windows and the motherboard chipset drives. How is this different from any other hardware, all of which obviously need drivers to work ?

Why the hell would they do this? Name one technical reason why the minimum requirement can’t be 64-bit Windows 7? You know, the version of Windows which will likely out last in place of Windows XP for the next 5+ years.

This is almost a deal breaker for me. I have a Mac so I can dual-boot both platforms on the same machine. Right now, there is no interest or need to develop on Windows 8. Period. I don’t wish to pay for another Microsoft OS when I shouldn’t need to. For what it is, Windows 7 is functional and may be the last great hold out until Windows 9 or whatever.

I do like Apple “keeping up”, but realize that with multi-platform & multi-OS version issues and the compatibility with all of Microsofts choices that you can get into a set of choices and drivers that makes in nearly impossible to maintain the code.

I can accept Boot Camp with Win v8.1 only and just run the rest in Parallels as needed.

Win7 is almost five years old, and Apple probably just doesn’t want to support it. Apple has to do the compatibility work, etc. They may make this the norm on future models; the Pro is just the first one.

I bet if you install Win7, the drivers work; it’s just not officially supported. You could probably get XP or 2000 working with rEFInd.

Better hope that W9 is not a game changer.
Mavericks has virtually the same UI and same bugs and missing features Lion/Leopard/Tiger had, while M$ at least had the nerve to change.
In Cook’s Apple innovation is at a near standstill, it’ll just take a few bold steps from new guy Nadella for M$ to seriously hurt Apple.
I’m a creative pro running Lightroom when I *want* to be using Aperture. My video guy is on FCP 7 and moving to Premier when he *wants* to go to FCPX. For us there is simply no reason to keep paying premium for hardware. Apple has $160b in the bank and is floundering in a market it should outright own.
Please give me 1 star if you agree.

The starring of others’ comments is stupid.
Now you wankers who 1-star other people’s opinions don’t know what to do.
Hahahaha.
Seriously, the Mac interface is perfect?? Are you deranged?! There is STILL no way to properly arrange windows, files in new windows have no default arrangement so if you resize the icons the rows go off out of view.
If you use Icon View to look at images and right arrow along it stops at the end of the row. How dumb is that??
STILL no Cut command (I’m a grownup, I can handle it).
No way to customize much, stuck with grey windows from 2001.
Shall we go on?

Why is it that you confuse change for the sake of change (or, worse, floundering around because they can’t get it right) with an excellent interface that currently needs only incremental improvement?

A Mac user, with little effort, could jump from System 6 to Mavericks with very little confusion (the primary one likely being the “app name” menu); I use Windows 7 every day, and the Windows 8 interface is confusing to me. Why is this “improvement”?